There are investors operating in Poland who, on their way to construction and the profit that goes with it, will take advantage of every opportunity. Recently, Magdalena Milert reported on a developer planning to build an apartment building in a strip of dunes in Dziwnów, also immersed in the seaside circumstances of nature is the Golebiewski Hotel in Pobierowo. One of the latest dramas in the cycle of destroying nature in the name of thoughtless building is currently unfolding in Krakow. Will it be possible to stop the construction of a housing development on Zakrzówek?
Krakow's Zakrzówek is a green area located about 3 kilometers from the city center, created when a limestone quarry was extinguished and then flooded with water in 1992. Since then, a wild bathing area operated there, which the city decided to develop after many years. We had to wait for the results until the summer of 2023, when the Zakrzówek Park was opened along with the Water Sports Center. Zakrzówek, however, is not only blue water and the surrounding rocks. It is also the extremely valuable green areas around the lagoon, which are the habitat of many plant and animal species, including representatives of the spotted knapweed, an extremely endangered species of snake or the prairie butterfly.
Zakrzówek swimming areas in Krakow
Photo: dwxn © CC BY-SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
A years-long battle for Zakrzówek
However, this does not stop individual developers, who have long been trying to develop this naturally valuable area. The dispute over Zakrzówek had its beginnings back in the early 2000s, when Portuguese investor Gerium Polska Development purchased 30 hectares of land located between Wylom and St. Jack streets, right on the eastern border of the reservoirs. As Mariusz Waszkiewicz, president of the Society for the Protection of Nature, wrote in 2011 in the pages of the monthly magazine Dzikie Życie, the company planned to create the Krakow City Park investment there, which, at various stages of its design, would house between 4,000 and even 10,000 people. The construction of the giant housing complex almost didn't happen when , in 2014, the city council passed a Local Development Plan for the area, providing - how else - the possibility of development combining residential and commercial functions.
However,the construction of a huge residential complex did not take place, primarily as a result of the action of city and nature activists. As a result of protests and requests by activists, in 2018 an ecological land use was created in the area of the planned development, a special form of protection that gives local governments a relatively large number of legal tools to counteract the degradation of valuable natural areas. Although it is not always effective, this time the developer managed to stop it.
Ecological use Zakrzówek
Photo: slawojar2 © CC-BY SA 4.0pl | Wikimedia Commons
Developer wants to build on Zakrzówek
However, this was not the last stage in the years-long fight against attempts to concrete over Zakrzówek. In 2021, Twardowski's Apollo Investment purchased a plot of land located on the east side of Wyłom Street, outside the boundaries of the ecological use established three years earlier. As lovekrakow.pl reported, a multi-family residential development offering buyers about 30 units would be built on the site. The planned multifamily building would be erected at the junction of two spatial tissues - the green areas of Zakrzówek and low-rise single-family housing, centered around Twardowskiego and św. Jacek streets.
administrative ping-pong
In February, the Cracow magistrate received an application for a building permit - according to the law, the local government had 65 days to issue a decision, but as a resultas a result of the requirement to amend and complete the documentation, which the investor provided only last December, the deadline was moved to January 16, 2025.
The procedure dragged on, and in the meantime the city, in response to protests from residents and city activists, placed the land to be developed under the new "Zakrzówek - Eastern Enclave" ecological use, which became effective on August 28, 2024.
Unexpectedly, on October 3 of the same year, Krzysztof Klęczar , the Małopolska Voivode, revoked the content of the resolution adopted by the Cracow City Council just over a month earlier. It would have seemed that the developer of Twardowski's Apollo Investment would no longer be prevented from developing land on Wyłom Street. By law, the city had to issue a building permit for it, which happened on January 16, 2025. However, another twist came - the governor's decision was appealed to the Provincial Administrative Court, which disagreed with Krzysztof Klęczar's ruling on January 31, 2025, thus reinstating the resolution on the establishment of the "Zakrzówek - eastern enclave" ecological use. The justification for the verdict is not known at this time.
The buildings of Zakrzówek Park
photo: Wiktor Bochenek
communities take matters into their own hands
As of this moment, the battle for Zakrzówek is still ongoing. Although it would seem that with the verdict of the Provincial Administrative Court, the construction will not happen, the governor can still appeal this decision to a higher instance, the Supreme Administrative Court. Opposing such a development is the Coalition of Krakow Movements "Together for the City," which has sent a petition to the Małopolska voivode, Krzysztof Klęczar. As we can read in the body of the petition:
We are fed up with the authorities' favoritism towards developers who want to build up this naturally valuable area. The fight for Zakrzówek has been going on for more than a dozen years and the expansion of the protection zone is fully justified on the merits. This was confirmed in opinions to the draft resolution of the Krakow City Council by scientists and experts, the Environmental Management Department of the Krakow City Hall and the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection.
The petition further includes the content of the resolution to expand the Zakrzówek ecological use to include the eastern enclave, in which the Krakow City Council lists in detail the rationale behind the rationale for such a move. At the time of writing, about 1,500 people had left their signatures under the petition - you can join them by signing it at this link.
Małopolska Governor Krzysztof Klęczar during the "Biesiada at Bartnik" meeting in 2024
Photo: Zalasem1 © CC BY-SA 4.0pl | Wikimedia Commons
Activists at a meeting with the governor
As the article was being drafted (5.2.2025), information about Krzysztof Klęczar's meeting with representatives of Krakow' s urban and environmental activists appeared on the website of the Małopolska Voivode.
-We talked in a good atmosphere, with the petition, of course, we will carefully study it. After this conversation, I come to the conclusion that this is a situation where two sides may be right. On the one hand, formal deficiencies in local government resolutions are not something that the supervisory authority can agree to, although, as you can see, the WSA has ruled otherwise. On the other hand, the intentions of residents who want to protect an area of natural value to them should be approached with understanding. From the point of view of the governor as an administrative body, of course, the evaluation of the whole matter must not be based on an emotional factor, but on a thorough formal and legal analysis. I declare that such will be carried out - both with regard to the appeal against the construction permit and the written justification of the WSA verdict
- concluded the voivode Krzysztof Klęczar.
The wording of the communiqué points out the reasons for Governor Klęczar's decision in favor of the developers, which are deficiencies in the documentation justifying the resolution on the new ecological use. In a settlement dated October 3, 2024, the provincial office said:
The establishment of an ecological use in an area therefore requires an analysis of whether the property on which the ecological use is to be established has significant natural values that justify the introduction of such a form of protection. It is therefore necessary to conduct a study of the flora and fauna on the property and demonstrate with adequate materials in the form of a nature inventory, opinions or expert reports that the area in question merits protection in the form of establishing an ecological use. However, the municipal council must take into account the necessary and proportional nature of the restrictions on property rights introduced. The measures introduced must therefore be necessary to achieve the goal of the resolution.
The same ruling held that the justifications submitted did not meet the aforementioned criteria, including that they did not directly refer to the plots of land under investigation and that they contained data from years ago that may have become outdated.
dangerous precedent
In a ruling issued a few days ago, the Provincial Administrative Court expressed a different view. We will refer to it when we receive and review its written justification. At this stage I have not made a decision to file a cassation complaint
- explains the voivode Krzysztof Jan Klęczar.
The matter of the Zakrzówek development is therefore still open. However, there is no doubt that cutting at least a piece out of the extremely valuable Zakrzówek area will be an irreparable loss both for the residents of Krakow and the unique ecosystem of the place. Nature conservation is a matter in which - in the opinion of the author of the text and in view of the impending climate disaster - there is no other side of the coin. There is always time to build, while the nature destroyed as a result may disappear irrevocably.
